1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a table tennis apparatus for projecting table tennis balls towards one playing surface on the side of a player from a ball projecting section disposed rearward of the other playing surface of a table.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a table tennis apparatus of this type, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 3017687 has been proposed. Such a conventional table tennis apparatus includes a table having a net stretched on the center thereof, a ball projecting section that is disposed on the rearward of one playing surface (a playing surface on the side of a machine) and that projects table tennis balls sequentially towards the other surface (a playing surface on the side of a player), wherein a plurality of optical sensors each having a light emitting element and a light receiving element are opposingly arranged on the left and right of the playing surface on the machine side along a longitudinal direction thereof, while a drop position of the ball returned by the player on the machine-side playing surface is detected by the optical sensors, and a score corresponding to the position is given to the player, the result of a training thereby being displayed by a specific numeral value.
The above conventional table tennis apparatus includes the ball projecting section disposed at the center position in the lateral direction relative to the playing surface, and an oscillating mechanism, so that balls can be aimed at both corners of the table, in addition to being straight in the longitudinal direction, thus enabling high-level training.
The construction of the ball projecting section of the table tennis apparatus is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 58-22229 and Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 63-7264.
According to the above conventional table tennis apparatus, since the ball projecting section is fixed to the center position in the lateral direction relative to the playing surface on the machine side, balls can simply be delivered by the oscillating mechanism from the center position to the left and right of the playing surface on the player side, and only a drop position of the ball on the playing surface on the machine side in the longitudinal direction is detected by the optical sensors to give a predetermined score to the player. Therefore, various modes of actual competitive play cannot be reproduced, resulting in limited applicability to training which is in touch with actual competitive play and to a table tennis game.